Down to the Last of Them
by Katagelophobia
Summary: They knew they were doomed from very early on, but only then did they realize how inescapable their failure was.


Kind of a horrifying experience, wasn't it? Watching them die?

Yes.

It was pure, astounding terror pounding through her veins, roaring in her ears. Just cradle him close, cradle him close, keep him gathered at her chest in the hopes her iron grip could hold him together, rocking back and forth like a mother soothing her child. Her heart beat more frantically than she could ignore. Adrenaline kept her shivering, kept her fingers tapping at his spine in wild patterns, vision torn into disarray and colours clamoring at her like the blare of a trumpet.

The tenseness was giving her a migraine. She clutched him a little closer, but the sound of his voice shocked her back into reality.

"Would it be too cliché for you to sing me a song?" He had laid his head neatly on her shoulder, draping his remaining unmangled arm around her neck. The smell of oil and metal that normally clung to him from day after day of working with robots had long since been overpowered by the clotting stench of blood.

"Unbearably so," she murmured after a pause, chuckling a bit before adding, "If you really want me to, I'll sing you 'California Girls.'"

He sighed wistfully, and his voice cracked a bit with pain. "It was my dream to be honoured with that noble ballad." She replied with a fake smile. Maybe the nerves were getting to her. Not maybe, absolutely. Watching everybody die did that to a person.

She wondered, as she did every time, if she could just use her powers to heal them, but after awhile she realized it was just prolonging the inevitable. She hadn't even witnessed all of them first-hand, but the weight on her conscience was hard to deal with. She actually had tried to stop a death, sealing a gaping wound in Roxy's chest, torn flesh being tugged back together and shattered bones being sealed back in place and skin stitching itself to form a thin, white scar across her ribs. But the moment the girl had ran back out to defend her friends again, she had another fatal wound. Jane fixed them, again and again until one time, Roxy had a huge gash straight through her jugular and was practically choking on her own blood and all she did was look up a Jane with wild eyes and mouth with cracked, blue lips, 'I'm tired.' Similar thing happened with Jake. And now she had stumbled upon Dirk, bloodied and bruised and his leg twisted in a nauseatingly unnatural way and his left arm practically ripped from the socket, and Jane didn't want to put him through all that healing and rehealng if he was just going to die eventually.

"We're doomed to fail," she whispered.

He replied with an exasperated sigh. "You're quite the optimistic one, aren't you."

She closed her eyes. "There's a difference between being optimistic and being delusional. You know that, Dirk." He shakily pushed away from her with his one arm, and his weakness from blood loss was evident; he nearly caved in, sitting without someone's support, and his leg was still uncomfortably bent underneath him. It was unsettling, seeing him slouch when she was used to him always seeming sly and confident, and his looking so weak made her stomach churn with the realization that it would take a lot of pain to get him to have such submissive posture. She wondered if she had damaged his ego by holding him like a child just moments before.

"Now listen here, Jane. You're going to go on without us, stab them to shreds, and when your impending death finally comes, we're all going to have a exquisite-ass party in the ethereal plane or something. And if that seems too daunting a task, I'm going to come back as a zombie and give you an ass-kicking enough to knock the hesitance right out of you," he gritted his teeth a bit, and Jane still felt queezy at his still-dripping wounds. "Capiche?"

"But-"

He narrowed his amber eyes, his now shattered sunglasses unable to hide them. "If you don't at least make an attempt to go out with a bang, I'm going to be severely disappointed in you. I better see a prolific amount of three-pronged stab wounds in our enemies."

Jane ran her fingers through her hair. "You set high standards, Dirk Strider."

"I only set high standards for myself. You? I know you can do this, 'cause it isn't any 'Shoot for the moon' kind of bullshit." He cast a lazy glance over his shoulder, adding, "I see something in the distance. Time to shine, Jane."

"Are you sure-" she moved to look past him and felt a pang of disappointment at the sight. There it was, tall and horrific and coming back for more, something Jane didn't even bother to fathom because she knew it was no good, so all she knew about it was how it was near invincible to them and really fucking pissed off. "I suppose so." she sighed, grabbing her tall trident off the ground and picking off the remnants of a helium balloon from it. Throwing him a questioning look, she added, "Should I," she furrowed her brow, looking for the right words, "Kill you right now? To, you know, stop the pain?"

"Don't worry about it." he waved it off, confident smirk slipping onto his face that Jane could tell was mostly facade. "It isn't anything I haven't done before."

"But suicide doesn't count here."

"Neither do mercy killings, I'd bet. Worst comes to worst, I'll just bleed out." she narrowed her eyes at his statement. Worst had come to worst.

Time was ticking by. "Wouldn't it be funny if those other kids suddenly appeared and made everything all hunky-dory?" Jane mused. She was stalling. She didn't want to die.

"But then they would only save us. That would pose a problem for Roxy and Jake."

"Yeah. Maybe one of them has time-y powers and could go back to fix that?"

Dirk only shrugged half-heartedly, and Jane knew that she couldn't hold off on it any longer, lest she be cowardly. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands, taking a deep breath before she ran. Ran with her trident at the ready, ran with all the strength she could muster up, which, truthfully, wasn't all that much. It had been a long, long day.

Jane gave a quick glance back, receiving a trembling, scarlet-stained thumbs up that reminded her that their session of the game was less built to create, and more to destroy.

Turning to stop and face him and cupping her hands around her mouth, she yelled, "You're breaking my heart here, Strider!" and tears were hot and sudden and streaming down her face so she took back to running. He was breaking her, him and Roxy and Jake and Dad were all breaking her and even if they were alive and together again she didn't think she could ever be mended, never when she could remember that fatigued look in their once-vibrant eyes. She turned back, truly, truly not wanting to be alone.

All she recognized in the distance was an empty, tired nod from that wreckage of a boy.


End file.
